Secretariat. William Nack

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СКАЧАТЬ six to seven and then to eight quarts as he lengthened, heightened, and widened through his yearling year of 1971. “A lovely colt. Half brother to Sir Gaylord,” Miss Ham noted.

      After his weaning, Secretariat lived in the end of a row of stalls by the office behind the big house that Chris Chenery rebuilt and renovated. Barn 14 is an attractive set of stalls withdrawn under a roof topped by a spanking bright blue and white cupola.

      Secretariat lived in the premier stall, the one traditionally reserved for the most promising colt yearling, Stall 11. Gentry placed him there because of his superior conformation and pedigree. Somethingroyal may not have been a runner—starting only once and finishing far up the racetrack—but she had given birth to fine running horses—Sir Gaylord, Syrian Sea, First Family. Putting the most promising colt in Stall 11 was not mere symbolic ceremony to Gentry. Facing the Coke machine and nearest the feed bin, the stall is seen and passed more times a day than any other stall in the shed, so its occupant is observed more closely during the routine of the farm.

      Secretariat lived there that fall, winter, spring, and most of the summer of 1971. Danny Mines, a yearling man, would daily walk the youngster to and from the field. Secretariat was nosy, alert, ambitious, playful, playing constantly with other yearlings, and in that shifting pecking order of the yearling crowd he was at times a leader, at times not.

      Meanwhile, he grew up. On April 20, 1971, Miss Ham noted that Secretariat had suffered a minor injury at the farm: “Nicked left shoulder—Not serious.” Things far worse had happened at the farm. The nick on Secretariat’s left shoulder, probably from a fence post, healed and disappeared.

      As spring and summer warmed up to August—baking the sand and gravel white on roadside shoulders, dappling the wardrobes of the bays, grays, and chestnuts in the fields—there was a sense of transition in the air at The Meadow. Chris Chenery was ill, and no one was certain what would happen to The Meadow if he died or whether anyone near him would continue it—his horses in the racing stable at Belmont Park and the stud in Virginia. No one knew if it would be sold or dissolved.

      Meredith Bailes, for one, sensed the uncertainty, and so did his father Bob, the trainer of the yearlings at The Meadow. Meredith was an exercise boy at the yearling training center. He and his father had talked about what would happen if Chris Chenery died, about who would take it over. They knew change might be in the air and were looking to the future.

      Penny Tweedy had been taking an interest in The Meadow in the last few years. The farm had been suffering through a dry spell and it needed something to give it a push while Chenery was ill; it needed a big horse, a gifted horse.

      For that reason, there was a sense of jubilation at the farm when the Meadow Stable’s homebred Riva Ridge, a son of Chenery’s First Landing, ran off with the $25,000 Flash Stakes at Saratoga August 2, winning by two and a half lengths and running three-quarters of a mile in the swift time of 1:09^4/5, only three-fifths of a second off the track record. The Flash had always been a prestigious two-year-old race, and the victory vaulted Riva Ridge into exclusive prominence among the 24,033 thoroughbreds born to his generation.

      A blacksmith shod Secretariat on August 3, fitting him out for a set of racing plates on his front feet. They were of aluminum and signaled the start of a new way of life. Later that morning, groom Charlie Ross and several other men headed for the row of stalls at the yearling barn. It was a day of permanent change.

      Ross, clipping a shank on Secretariat, led him out of Stall 11, to which he would never return, lined him up in single file with the other yearlings, and marched him in caravan down the road. Yearling trainer Bob Bailes directed traffic while the youngsters, heads up, moved across the pavement, passing the stretch of the racetrack, across the sandy surface to the infield and offices.

      Secretariat was taken to Stall 1, in the corner, and there his training began on August 4.

      Ross played with the colt’s ears, preparing him for a bridle. Secretariat ducked away from Ross; he did not like his ears touched. Ross also tried to lift a foot to clean it, but Secretariat kicked him away. Meredith Bailes watched from the doorway and heard Ross cussing softly.

      Secretariat’s spookiness, not uncommon in the young, meant more work for Ross, more trouble teaching, more time. He put a rub rag to the colt, trying to clean him off, and Secretariat dipped away again. So Ross worked with Secretariat the next few days, picking up his feet again and again, toying gently with the sensitive ears, rubbing and patting him and talking, getting him accustomed to the presence of a human in the stall.

      On August 9, they fitted a bit into his mouth for the first time, pulling the bridle over his ears. Meredith Bailes put on the saddle. At the odd sensation of the saddle and girth, Secretariat humped his back, arching it. Inside the 220-yard indoor ring, where all the Meadow yearlings are schooled and broken under saddle, the three stopped—Bailes, Ross, and Secretariat.

      Bailes put his arms over the colt, patting him. Ross took the bridle with one hand and reached down, giving Bailes a boost.

      Up Bailes went, not straddling the colt, only lying across his back, lengthwise, his stomach lying on the saddle. Bailes said nothing, watching what he was doing, his full weight resting on the back. The bridle was reinless. Ross led Secretariat several steps down the ring with Meredith lying across him. Ross stopped the colt. Bailes slid off, jumped back on. Ross walked Secretariat forward again, a few steps at a time around the oval. Bailes was up and off, up and off, Ross walking and stopping, walking and stopping. For three days they went through that routine, accustoming the colt to a saddle and bridle and a body on his back, a bit in his mouth. Secretariat behaved sensibly, Bailes recalled, with poise and equanimity. The lesson changed on August 12.

      Bailes again saddled the colt, and he stood for a moment beside him in the indoor ring. Secretariat no longer humped at the feel of the saddle, and he had never tried to “break Western,” as they call it on the farm—to buck, kick, or break loose. But August 12 was another day, the one on which Bailes would climb aboard and ride him for the first time, straddling the colt with both legs. Bailes knew the ceiling of the ring was about twelve feet high, perhaps a foot or so more. His head had almost grazed it while riding yearlings that bucked him. Bailes donned his blue fiberglass helmet, steadied himself at the side of Secretariat, talking to him. “Take it easy, old boy. Whoa. Easy now. Whoa.”

      When a horseman like Bailes communicates with a horse, it is not through language, of course, but through stringing together tone and sounds with a melody, a rhythm of oral unguents, lotions, and balms to soothe and reassure. Secretariat was strapping for his age, and Bailes felt him as a source of great energy, of unusual strength.

      On his back, Bailes spoke and Secretariat peered back at him, but he didn’t buck, just watched Bailes as Ross took him around the ring. He never turned a hair in menace. Nor did he on August 17, the first day Ross turned Secretariat loose with Bailes on him. The prospect had concerned Bailes. What worried him was that Sir Gaylord had been tough to break as a yearling in training, and he wondered whether Secretariat, his half brother, might be the same—it sometimes ran in a family. But Secretariat behaved with unusual aplomb for a yearling. Bailes walked, stopped, started again, rubbed Secretariat’s sides with his legs, and eased back on the reins. Three days later he clucked to the colt—a kissing sound—and Secretariat moved off in a jog, a slow trot. The tempo of the schooling continued to pick up, but always one move at a time.

      Bailes urged Secretariat into a canter, then a slow gallop, for the first time on August 24, and during the next eight days the colt walked, jogged, and cantered in the indoor ring. He learned how to canter easily both ways with facility.

      That was the key: Bailes cantered the colt clockwise and counterclockwise in the one-furlong shed, teaching Secretariat to use the left and right leads, or strides, a СКАЧАТЬ